In a Rut
by skinny-mini
Summary: Shego may have finally crossed the line with her blatant honesty... Has she pushed Drakken into a permanent funk? Or can she still reverse the situation with a little... help?
1. Using Our Words to Hurt

**All characters used in this story are, of course, copyright Disney. **

_**In a Rut**_

**Part One**

"**Using Our Words to Hurt"**

"And so, Kim Possible," the silhouette shouted over the gale, his raspy voice laced with unabashed glee, "You have no choice but to stand idly by and watch as my new Indomitable Wave Manipulator unleashes a mad excess of man-crushing tsunamis on the rest of the surrounding world!"

The figure finished his speech with obvious relish; his arms raised above his head in a triumphant gesture, entire body poised for his inevitable victory. His wicked laugh rose high over the sounds of the whistling wind and the crash of the water against the rocks below.

A great bolt of lightning filled the stormy sky, providing an impressive atmospheric effect that befitted the situation quite nicely. The man on the rock began cackle even louder, not wanting to be upstaged by the bad weather. He went on like this for a while, laughing manically at his hostages, until he ran out of air and was forced to take several deep breaths.

Once recovered, he had another quick fit of the evil giggles, then moved to flip a switch in the nearby rock wall.

At once, the entire isle was lit up by a bizarre set of stadium style lanterns, and the figures—all just seconds before too indiscernible to make out in the gloom—became quite visible.

The eccentric villain on the on the boulder was suddenly given a face in the intense new glow—and a very strange one at that. His skin was of a sickly blue hue, and dark circles ringed his wild eyes. He was clad in a dark coat, gloves, and boots—the usual garb of your garden-variety mad scientist. A distinctive scar marred the cheek just below his left eye, and his unruly black hair stood on end even in the pouring rain.

Close beside him stood a exceptionally sallow skinned woman, her green and black cat suit soaked through, tendrils of her raven hair whipping about her face like angry serpents. Even wet and wind-blown, she was strikingly beautiful, wearing a cold smile that did not quite reach her narrowed emerald eyes.

The abrupt brightness had also revealed two more individuals—these ones tied tightly to a palm tree on a lower level of outcropping. They seemed to be the losing party, though neither looked at all resigned to defeat. They were younger than their captors, at the very most in their late teens. One was a pretty red-headed girl, glaring confidently at the laughing man on the stone platform, her green eyes filled with defiance. The other was a blonde boy with freckles sprinkled across his cheeks, cheerful-looking despite the ostensibly bad situation.

And it was the boy who was first to speak after the darkness had once again shrouded the four, his comical voice shouting out to interrupt a third bout of blue man's mad laughter.

"Or at least on the coastal regions!"

The man on the rock ceased his hooting abruptly, and he turned his head slowly in the direction of the young man. In his surprise at being interrupted, his arms were left still raised in the air.

"What was that?"

"I said, even if your tsunamis don't reach the WHOLE rest of the world, they'll at least hit the coastal regions!"

The blue man's jaw dropped in surprise at the brassiness of the comment, and, in a state of mild unconsciousness, he let his arms fall limply to his sides.

"Uhh—"

"Well, think about it, dude… You're expecting that little machine to make tsunamis that'll wipe out everything, right? I'm guessing that the most it can do is take out stuff on the _edges_ of the land… Thinking it'll destroy everything—yeah, my friend, I'd say that you're _waaay_ kidding yourself with that idea. I mean, in _my_ opinion, it's a _bit much_ to ask for—"

"SILENCE!" the man on the rock barked, waving a furious fist at the startled looking youth. He had no patience for the stupid, driveling chatter of teenage boys.

"Hey man, I'm just saying—"

"ZIP IT, BUFFOON!"

At this retort, the blonde's expression became indignant, and his good-natured humor disappeared.

"Aw, come on, I thought we'd moved past this—"

"WELL, ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO BACK, THEY SAY!"

"What? Who's 'they'?"

"IT—THEY—YOU—ARGH!"

A loud rumble of thunder sounded overhead as the blue man huffed and stomped in a circle, his arms flailing in an animated rage. After he'd exhausted his fury, he spun back around to face the red-headed girl—she was the one he'd been speaking to in the first place.

"AS I WAS SAYING…" his eyes flashed and his mouth opened wide, and he prepared to deliver the words he had been meaning to, had he not been interrupted by the _sidekick_.

And there he stood—just like that—for a few unpleasantly long moments, his eyes burning with evil intensity and his tongue poised for a villainous do-gooder lashing, until his expression clouded in bemusement as he realized his dilemma.

Sheepishly wringing his hands, he turned to his female companion.

"Er… what was it that I was saying?"

The pale-green beauty came to life with unsubtle exasperation, rolling her eyes to the cloud-filled sky.

"Oh, for the love of…" she moaned, slapping a gloved hand over the center of her face. She didn't even attempt to mask the irritation in her voice. "You were telling Possible all about how she has no choice but to stand idly by and watch as your new Indomitable Wave Manipulator unleashes a mad excess of man-crushing tsunamis on the world—"

"Or at least on the coastal regions!" the blonde piped up once more, his liveliness restored.

The man on the rock instantly snapped his head in the boy's direction, but the teenager had already begun to feign innocence, whistling a polite, unassuming tune.

The blue man grimaced and turned his eyes back to his own sidekick.

"Thank you, Shego."

"What else do I live for?" she replied off-handedly, turning away from the entire scene to watch the now violently rumbling wave device on the stone opposite their own.

The man frowned for a moment at the back of his unfriendly cohort, then twisted his head to flash a frightening smile in the direction of his red-headed nemesis.

"Kim Possible… PREPARE TO—"

"NOW, RUFUS!" the girl suddenly shouted, and from her mess of tangled hair jumped a small, hairless rodent. The creature landed purposefully on the watch that was clipped about the teen's wrist and readied himself for action. Then, with a tap of his tiny claw, he pressed the biggest, brightest button on the gadget, and was launched high into the air as the face of the watch shot out like springboard.

He flew through the air in a pink blur, making a direct shot for the Wave Manipulator. He landed with a tuck-roll, anchoring himself right into the control pad. From there, he immediately sprung up, prepared to hit the button that would stop all of the chaos… and was confronted with a good square foot's worth of keys to choose from.

Turning back to face Kim, he let out a shrill squeak of dismay.

"He doesn't know which one to press, Kim!" the blonde offered his translation to the girl beside him. As Rufus' owner, he found that he understood the little guy's language better than anyone else.

"Just pick one, Rufus!"

A particularly loud wave smashed against the rocks below, sending a great blast of foamy water high into the air to rain down on the teens.

"Hurry!"

Rufus squeaked his understanding, and turned quickly back to the control panel. Without any idea what he was doing (only knowing that if he didn't try something, his friends would end up being squished by a wave before any of them got to see the Indomitable Wave Manipulator in action), he pressed a good many buttons at random, then sat back and waited.

The machine did nothing.

Rufus hunched over, prepared to press the whole keyboard at once if he had to. He lifted a claw into the air—

The device boo-beeped, let out a couple of shrill whistles, then fell silent.

Almost simultaneously, the waves below stopped crashing and the wind let up. The island and all around it seemed to become suddenly quiet—it appeared as though the calm had been restored and villains thwarted.

The blonde let out a whoop of victory. "Rufus, my buddy, you are—"

But he was shushed by Kim.

"What? Is this not a perfectly spankin' reason to rejoice?"

"Ron, something isn't right."

"Of course everything is right! Why wouldn't it be?"

Kim was quiet for a moment, and the only sounds were those of quarrelling voices coming from somewhere on the rocky platform above.

"It just… It just doesn't feel _right_."

Ron rolled his eyes.

"Kim Possible, you are such a—"

He stopped short, a look of pure terror registering on his face. He had been rendered speechless, his train of thought lost as he stared off into the distance. The voices above had suddenly fallen silent as well, Kim noted, another sure sign that her hunch had been dead on.

She hated it when she was right… Well, when she was right about these sorts of things.

She slowly followed Ron's gaze, finding that her eyes were met by the sight of a huge, glowing pole as it ascended from the top of the wave device. As it reached steadily toward the sky, the hum of live electricity filled the air, growing louder as the rod rose higher. Then, there was a single mechanical screech as the shaft ceased escalation, and the island was left in an expectant hush.

Suddenly, a loud hissing noise cut through the quiet, and the frightening hypnotic quality of the situation evaporated instantly. The pole had begun to spit sparks.

The two villains reappeared on the platform, neither looking remotely pleased… The man, in fact, looked on the verge of hysterics.

"Wha-what's it doing?" What was left of his evil tenacity was quickly dissolving into a full-blown panic. "WHAT ON EARTH IS IT DOING!"

Shego shot him a very dirty look.

"So, Drakken, I guess I can assume that this bit wasn't part of the original plan, right?"

"Ron, Rufus is the only one that can reach the lipstick! We need him!" Back on the lower level of outcropping, Kim was trying to talk sensibly to the horrified Ron.

Ron, however, was preoccupied with the fact that Rufus was still very much sitting on the control panel of the machine, glued there in a frightened stupor.

"RUFUS! GET DOWN HERE! YOU DON'T WANT TO BE ADDING THE WORDS 'BURNT' AND 'CRISPY' TO YOUR RESUME, BELIEVE ME!"

Rufus snapped out of his trance at once, squealed in extremely enthusiastic compliance, and quickly scampered off of the now violently buzzing machine. There was another hiss of electricity, followed this time by a frighteningly large shot of lightning that narrowly missed the lucky rodent.

"You always forget about the mole rat when you think of your ideas, don't you?" Shego hopped off the platform, grabbing the wrist of her boss and pulling him along behind her just seconds before another bolt of lightning struck the spot where he had been standing.

"SHEGO!"

"RUFUS!"

"RON!"

"WHAT!" Ron had been sharing very tender moment with his pet, now perched safely on top of his head, and both seemed to have quite forgotten the situation at hand.

"I know that you're glad Rufus is okay, but he needs to get the lipstick or we'll all be adding the words 'burnt' and 'crispy' to our resumes!" Kim shouted. She had a positively resolute look in her eyes, completely unafraid, despite the intensity of the weather surging just above their heads.

Ron smiled apologetically and turned to address his mole rat, now awaiting orders on his owner's shoulder.

"Rufus—time for evasive action, naked mole rat style! Go to it!"

Rufus gave a miniature salute, jumped from Ron's shoulder and onto the backpack, then quickly buried into the largest pocket of bag. Seconds later, he resurfaced successfully with the tube.

"Great!" Kim beamed and nodded her head, "You know what to do!"

The pink rodent squeaked enthusiastically, held the lipstick level with his chest, and pointed at the rope that fixed Kim and Ron to the tree.

"Now!"

The two teens leaned as far out and away from the target as they could, and Rufus uncapped the cosmetic. Instantly, a beam of red laser light shot out and burnt effortlessly through the thick binding.

Kim and Ron jumped up as soon as the last of the ropes had fallen away, and, within all of three seconds, they had grabbed Kim's backpack, the laser lipstick, and the mole rat; and were speeding down the rocks and toward the small submarine that they had left docked further along the shore.

The other two were not so lucky.

"IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THAT?" the blue doctor screamed, his entire body flattened against the rock behind which he and Shego had hidden.

"Um, okay, _hellooo_. Your machine, not mine, Doctor Doofus."

A monster-sized bolt of lightning struck their boulder, instantly reducing a good half of their shelter into pebble-sized debris.

"Shego, make it stop!"

"Me? No way! If you want it to stop, you go put your own life on the line and find the off switch! Don't make _me_ the human sacrifice for _your_ stupidity!"

"Hit it with your plasma!" he offered impulsively.

"And end up blowing everything else up along with it! I don't think so!"

"Then can't you kung-fu it or something! Deliver some sort of machine-breaking blow of super ninja strength!"

"No way! That's suicide—it'll zap me if I kick it!" she paused thoughtfully for a moment before continuing in a voice that positively smacked of sarcasm, "Oh, _wait_. Let me reconsider… Yeah, okay, I've changed my mind! If dying will get me out of the contract I have with you, I'd be more than happy to—"

Drakken roughly grabbed Shego's shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her.

"JUST DO SOMETHING, YOU IMPERTINENT WISEACRE!"

"Alright, alright, sheesh," she said, standing up so quickly that the doctor fell back onto his rear end in surprise. "Why am I always the one that has to do all the messy work?"

Drakken opened his mouth to reply, but his sidekick silenced him with a single gloved finger to the lips before he was able to actually say anything.

"No, no—don't answer. A couple hours from now, I can't imagine that there would be too much left of your lair worth saving."

The man growled indignantly at the saucy remark, but didn't bother to argue once she'd dropped her hand. He watched in total silence as she turned away from him and moved to climb onto of the remains of their shelter, then still as she leapt effortlessly up the rocky wall to another ledge high above his own, the wind whipping through her hair, her green hands glowing all the while.

--------

"How was I supposed to know it could control other things _besides_ water?"

The sound of Drakken's piqued shouting reverberated raucously into the hall from the exterior antechamber, followed suit by the sound of the entrance door being shoved noisily back in place.

"I don't know… maybe if you'd actually _read_ the manual…" Shego's voice snapped back in obvious disdain.

Several of the henchmen sitting around the hall winced, anticipating what they knew was sure to be a very nasty argument. They, after all, had come to expect that sort of thing whenever Drakken and Shego happened to be in close proximity of one another.

"Manual-shmanual! What good are they? My genius is all I need!"

Drakken stepped into the room through the rounded-out entryway in the stone wall, and Shego came in behind him soon after. Both looked annoyed and on edge, and were equally soaked with rainwater from head to toe. Upon their walking into the room, several of the henchmen abruptly abandoned their stations and headed in a nonchalant trot through the sliding doors at the opposite end of the room.

"Some genius! Did you see that fat hole your stupid _Abominable Wave Maker_ blew in the lair?"

"INDOMITABLE WAVE MANIPULATOR," he made sure to annunciate every syllable with infuriating clarity as he corrected her. "And I've been meaning to get that part of the lair renovated, anywho."

Shego snorted in disbelief.

"Yeah, whatever! Since when?"

"Since… since…" His ears turned an indelicate shade of crimson as he found himself at a loss for words. When he finally able to speak again, he made up for his momentary lapse of control by doubling the volume of his voice. "SINCE WHEN DO I RELATE ALL MY RENOVATION PLANS WITH YOU, LITTLE MISS NOSEY PARKER!"

At this, the remainder of the henchmen stood up to leave. This batch, however, didn't bother to mask their fear as they ran hastily in the direction of the exit door.

"Oh yeah? As I recall, the first rule of the lair was—and this would be the set of rules that YOU made up—'No secrets'! Remember that?"

"The renovation's no secret! You—you just never asked!" Drakken turned away and he too made to walk toward the sliding doors.

"Riiiight." Hardly convinced, Shego padded along behind him as he tried to make his escape. She wasn't about to let him leave without putting up a good fight; she didn't feel that she had yet come out on top of the argument, and she was not the type that took kindly to losing.

Drakken sped his villainous sauntering to a full-on power-walk, trying to pretend that he was in an enormous hurry to get to bed and that he hadn't noticed that Shego was tailing him. Of course, the attempt was all in vain—she still managed to cut him off, blocking the exit with outspread arms. Drakken sniffed huffily and moved to edge around the woman, but she was unyielding.

"You're in my way, Shego," he warned, his voice low in what his long-time sidekick easily determined to be a false bravado.

"Hello, earth to Dr. D… did you ever consider that maybe your genius just isn't good enough to make the grade?" She spoke to continue their conversation as though it hadn't ended a minute before.

"NONSENSE! My genius has taken us very close to victory in the past, hasn't it?" He forgot about his great desire for sleep as he irately crossed his arms over his chest.

"Yeah, sure, it takes us there… and then we always lose—bad!" She placed her hands on her hips and leaned toward her boss. "We end up going to prison, break out, and then you get another cockamamie idea about world domination! Kim Possible shows up, does her teen heroine shtick, we get our butts kicked, and—we—end—up—back—at—square—one!" She made sure to drag out the last bit of her speech, loving how the mono-syllables sounded with long pauses in between. She also noted with satisfaction that they actually seemed to have an effect on her ordinarily hard-headed employer. He seemed to have been stunned into silence.

She felt a wave of cruelty usurp her, urging her to press on with her verbal assault.

"Oh, please! Don't give me that act of surprise! We've had this conversation at least a hundred thousand times! Don't pretend like you're just starting to really get it NOW!"

She paused again, taking relish in the fact that he hadn't tried to interrupt or contradict her. She really was on a roll! And the look on his face… he almost looked like he actually cared what she was saying!

"You are so ridiculous!" she spat in disgust. "What are you looking all wounded for? I'm not saying anything I haven't already!"

She stopped then, having had her fun, and waited for him to come up with some lame retort to fight back with… and waited… and waited…

A sinking feeling filled her stomach, and she realized suddenly that he really was speechless. For the first time, he wasn't going to say anything back. He just wasn't able to.

She slowly lowered her hands from her hips. Her entire demeanor had changed from anger to unease in mere seconds.

"Uh… Doctor D?" An uncharacteristic tentativeness seeped into her voice as she spoke.

Drakken's eyes were dull and lifeless, and his entire body seemed to have diminished—in soul as well as size. He had become someone much smaller and submissive… someone, Shego found suddenly, she didn't recognize.

Finally, he took one rattling breath, and opened his mouth to speak in a voice that was quite unlike his own.

"Maybe I really am just starting to get it now, Shego…"

And with that, he stepped around the shell-shocked woman, walked wordlessly through the door, and left his sidekick alone and cold in the uncomfortable silence of a very empty hall.


	2. His Delicate Situation

**All characters used in this story are, of course, copyright Disney. **

_**In a Rut**_

**Part Two**

"**His Delicate Situation"**

_Silence. Pure, unadulterated silence. _

It filled the air that morning, reaching into every nook and cranny of the small, stone room it occupied. It played off the green marble and light glass that made up the floor; danced across every decoratively sleek object that made up the interior.

It was very dark in the room too—all the thick curtains were drawn over the larger windows towards the left side of the room. There was only a small ray of artificial brightness that had managed to pierce through the black. This delicate light—just barely filtering through the small, crack of a pane that was situated directly above the entrance door—beamed finely down onto the bed.

And, much like a tiny spotlight above a miniature stage, it cast gentle glow over the form of a sleeping Shego.

She slept on a bare mattress, her sole coverlet folded at the foot of her bed, cast away in the summer season. She wore only a small, silky black camisole and matching lace panties that clung form-fittingly to her body. She was lying in a comfortable still on her side, her legs out before her so that her feet just dangled off the edge of the mattress. Her arms were bent at the elbows, positioned so that her hands lay tucked beneath one soft pale-green cheek. Her voluptuous black hair cascaded out across her pillow and curled over her shoulders, becomingly mussed by sleep and haloed softly in the dim light.

She was the very picture of serenity, wearing a simply contented look on her beautiful face, her dark lips curled up into an unconscious smile.

"_WAKE UP, YOU!_"

At once, all the curtains flew open, filling the room suddenly with the blindingly brilliant light of day.

Shego shot straight up with a loud shriek, her green eyes wide. The force of her abrupt movement sent her folding bed into a strange frenzy of shaking, and it rattled violently before it snapped closed upon her body.

She let out a few muffled cries of anger, then the bed popped back open, and she was left sitting knee to chest in the center of the mattress, her arms held out to the sides of her body, fingers level with her face and curled irately as green plasma lit her hands. The raven hair that had been so lovely moments before now stood frightfully on end. Her eyes darted furiously about her room, looking for the assailant that had woken her so unexpectedly.

"_SHEGO—UP! NOW!_" the voice shouted out again, and she was able find the source of the noise: the sickeningly blue alarm clock on her bedside table.

She immediately reached out and snatched up the thing, an angry growl rising in her throat.

"_YOU GET OUT OF BED THIS VERY MOMENT, OR… OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!_" the high-pitched rasp snapped at her from between her fingers. Though it sounded more like a smurf than a full-grown man, there was no mistaking the voice of her boss.

"You have got to be kidding me." She looked disbelievingly at the object in her hand. When had this been put in her room?

"_RISE AND SHINE! UP AND AT 'EM!_"

"No thank you!"

"_CARPE DIEM!_" the recording continued, oblivious to her unwillingness. "_SEIZE THE DAY!_"

"Seize _this_," Shego raised the clock above her head, rearing back to throw it against the far wall.

"_THE WORLD DOESN'T TAKE OVER ITSELF, YOU KNOW!_"

The phrase made her stop in mid-pitch, and the little clock fell down onto the mattress before her. Suddenly, all the events of the past night came rushing back to her.

"Doctor D…" she said in a voice barely above a whisper, her eyes staring anxiously at the empty air before her. The night's scene began to replay in her head like a cassette in a tape player.

"_Oh, please! Don't give me that act of surprise! We've had this conversation at least a hundred thousand times! Don't pretend like you're just starting to really get it NOW! … You are so ridiculous! What are you looking all wounded for? I'm not saying anything I haven't already! …Uh… Doctor D?"_

"_Maybe I really am just starting to get it now, Shego…"_

She hit the mental off button on the player, a sinking sensation rapidly filling her stomach. Had he really said that? Had he truly reacted the way she remembered? Or was she just imagining things?

Uneasily, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and slipped her feet into her sea foam-colored slippers, then hastily grabbed her bathrobe, threw it on over her scanty sleepwear, and made her way out the door. She needed some food to help clear her head.

She moved quickly through the long hallway, made a turn, then walked through a round entryway and into the dark kitchen.

She flicked on the sickly yellow light that hung from the ceiling, and her eyes were instantly met by the sight of Drakken, his head buried in his arms as he lay forward on the tin-plated table. He was also dressed in bathrobe, and his black hair was more violently messy than usual. Shego thought that the kitchen was an odd place to spend the night, and probably not a very comfortable one either, and decided it was best not to wake him.

A skilled ninja, she managed to be nothing but silent as she walked around the large table and toward one of the many black cabinets that covered the walls. She opened the door, grabbed a particularly obnoxious-looking yellow mug, then sidled quietly in the direction of the coffee maker. She poured herself a steaming mug of coffee and—

Wait—_steaming_?

Her brows furrowed and she eyed her coffee suspiciously for a few moments. She then surmised that someone must have warmed up what was leftover from yesterday in the microwave and then returned it to its pot, not wanting to wake Drakken by making a new batch… of course, this was the private kitchen, so that didn't quite make sense… but then again, with the cheap, foul-tasting grinds that the henchmen were supplied with in _their _kitchen, it would make sense that they would risk a trip to get their hands on something actually drinkable. And besides, who else could have? Drakken was out cold… It _had_ to be one of the henchmen… Yes…

She shrugged, relatively satisfied with her explanation, and turned around and unexpectedly found herself facing a very frightening looking blue doctor.

She let out a startled shriek and dropped her coffee to the floor with a crash.

"Don't scream, Shego. It's bad for my nerves."

Drakken's face bore clear signs of an obviously hard night—he had dark bags under his eyes and little prickles of hair stuck out in odd places on his chin—and he looked all-around drawn and tired. He was slouching uncharacteristically, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked at Shego with bloodshot eyes.

"Er… right. Your nerves," she repeated uncomfortably.

They stood silently at the counter for a few moments, eyeing each other in the stark fluorescent light.

"You look terrible!" Shego suddenly blurted.

Drakken sighed, his shoulders hunching in a little more.

"Well, at least you're honest."

Shego blinked, feeling at once sorry for the outburst.

"Uh… It's just… You sort of surprised me… I mean, I thought you were sleeping," she finished lamely.

"I didn't get a wink of sleep all night." He let out a loud yawn for emphasis.

"Oh." Shego looked with rapt interest at a pile of crumbs that sat on the counter. "So… not tired?"

Drakken straightened up and threw his arms over his head with an emotional gasp.

"When a man realizes that he's wasted half of his life chasing a dream that can never be his—when he notices that he's never once come out the victor of any evil conquests—when he finally sees what a _complete loser_ he is…" He whimpered, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. "_How can he ever sleep again?_"

The question came out in a strangled wail, and Drakken was suddenly crying into the front of his sidekick's bathrobe like a big blue baby.

Shego, shocked at this sad display of behavior, found herself temporarily at a loss for words. After a long while, she hesitantly began patting his back and cleared her throat nervously.

"Well… you could try pills… or something."

Drakken merely let out a choked sob at this and flung his arms around Shego's middle. The woman flushed in embarrassment, and was all at once very glad that this was, in fact, the private kitchen.

"Never again," the blue man managed to whimper into Shego's shoulder after a solid minute or so of nothing but crying.

Shego, painfully aware of Drakken's arms still around her waist, said nothing.

Drakken sighed wetly, then sniffled.

"I'm done."

Shego frowned.

"Yeah, I _really_ hope you're not still talking about sleeping."

Drakken instantly stopped crying, unwrapped his arms from around his employee, and stood up stock-straight, all signs of his tearful fit vanished.

"Very funny, Shego," he growled coldly, crossing his arms over his chest. "No, Doctor Drakken is finally retiring his evil endeavors… he can't go on playing the foolish, bumbling, half-witted, ne'er do well villain forever—"

"And you're referring to yourself in third person now." Shego raised an eyebrow at the man before her, her typical tone of sarcasm leaking back into her voice, "_How_ _interesting_."

"Shego!" Drakken's eyes were wide. "You won't let me be happy, you won't let me be miserable—you always have something hurtful to say to make me second-guess myself!"

A look of defiance registered on Shego's face.

"Well, in this case, maybe that's a good thing!" she snapped, turning away from her boss and stalking to the pantry on the other end of the room.

Once she was there, she had to take a moment to calm down. Standing before the door, she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. If she got mad, what good would that do?

She reopened her eyes, pulled open the pantry door, then glanced over her shoulder at Drakken, who hadn't yet moved from his spot by the counter.

"A good thing," she repeated calmly, then quickly changed the subject. "Fruity Puffs?" she offered, holding the bright red box of cereal out and waving it to the side where he could see it.

Drakken gasped.

"So you _want_ me to be the laughing-stock of the entire super villain community!"

Shego decided to play dumb.

"Now, Doc," she said lightly, a forced smile on her face, "I hardly think eating Fruity Puffs will make you the laughing-stock of the entire super villain community… even if you do keep the prizes—"

"I tell you, those Pop Pop bobble heads are collectors' items!" he barked indignantly as a light flush crept into his cheeks. "And you know very well that I was not talking about the cereal!"

He paused, tapping his fingertips together tensely.

"I was…" he reddened further, glancing at the ceiling, and cleared his throat. "I was referring to my reputation… _and how it has diminished significantly since Kim Possible walked into the picture_."

He finished hurriedly, as though he were divulging some huge secret that caused him much chagrin to be heard aloud.

Shego considered what he had just said for a few moments, then walked towards him and set the box of cereal down on the counter beside her.

"Okay, firstly, you didn't really have much of a reputation to begin with—"

Drakken sniffed huffily.

"And secondly," Shego moved around the blue man to the refrigerator, "it's not like you're the only one who gets their butt kicked by Kim Possible."

He opened his mouth and whirled to face her in protest, but was thwarted when Shego opened the refrigerator door and hit him square in the nose.

"She walks all over everybody…" the woman continued, ignoring the moan of pain from the other side of the door as she reached for the milk. "You're no more a loser than anybody else!"

She closed the door at this, and walked back around her boss and toward the cereal box, where she set the carton down on the counter as well.

"True…" Drakken stopped to consider what she had said some more, then continued, "But does that _really_ make it any better?"

Shego had moved to open another cupboard, in search of a cereal bowl.

"Well—"

But Drakken ignored her.

"No, it does not!" he shouted, a lost look on his face. "Why keep cooking up evil plans when I know that Possible is around to mercilessly stamp them out!"

Shego stopped looking for a bowl, letting her hands fall to her sides and her gaze to the counter.

"On second thought, I'm really not that hungry," she said evenly, and began to turn towards the door. "I think I've lost my appetite."

"Oh, so you're leaving me?" Drakken's hurt voice carried from his spot. "You can't stand to be around a failure, is that it?"

Shego's jaw dropped and she whirled to look at the blue man.

"No, that's not it—"

"No, no, don't," Drakken waved a hand in the air casually, but Shego could easily see the tears that were welling up in his eyes again. "You don't have to explain! I understand completely! If I was you and I was stuck with me, then I would want to be as far away from me as I possibly could!"

Shego opened her mouth to object, but quickly closed it again, a look of confusion crossing her face.

"Wait—_what?_"

"NEVER MIND!" the doctor shouted in frustration. "I can't even talk good anymore!"

Shego couldn't help herself.

"Talk _well_," she said, "You can't talk _well _anymore."

"Don't correct me, woman!" Drakken choked out angrily. "It's detrimental to my delicate situation! Can't you see I'm a man on the verge of emotional psychosis!"

Shego's eyes narrowed.

"And this is different from every other day _how?_"

Drakken howled in frustration.

"SHEGO!"

He moved to step towards her but ended up slipping in the spilt coffee that, in all the commotion, Shego had forgotten to clean up. He was instantly sent falling to the grey stone floor.

"Right!" Shego's eyes were wide, and she began to edge very quickly toward the exit door. "Not hungry—leaving! See you, Doc!"

And with that, she slipped hurriedly out the door and began to race down the hall, with the only thing following her the sound of Drakken's hysterical wailing as he discovered that his sidekick had, in fact, broken his favorite mug.

------

Some hours later, Shego sat moodily at her monitor, both elbows resting on the desktop of controls as she cradled her chin in her hands. Her eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the large, bright screen as she habitually checked the security cameras that were placed about the exterior of the Haunted Island lair.

It wasn't exactly the most stimulating way to spend her time, but hey, it definitely beat finding herself in another unsettling chance encounter with her boss...

She dropped her hands from her face and quickly keyed in the command that would bring up the set of indoor surveillance. For the eighth time since she'd entered the room about twenty-five minutes before, she rechecked the monitor for any activity in the hallway outside.

Nothing.

She rolled her eyes and pushed herself and her rolling chair away from the station and into the center of the room. Her face was drawn into an unpleasant scowl.

The rest of that morning had been terrible. She'd been forced to sneak around the lair like some sort of nervous cat-burglar, keeping her back to the wall as she slid down the corridors, peeking around every corner before she moved into the next passage. And she'd hated every minute of it… She couldn't stand having to tiptop around everywhere, constantly ducking and slinking, always on the watch for her blue employer. She positively loather hiding from the man, stealing away into empty rooms like some frightened little girl.

Usually, there was nothing that was there to make her want to stay out of the sight of her boss. It wasn't like he was particularly frightening to Shego—it hadn't been long into her employment that she'd seen that all his evil unruliness was ninety-nine percent hot air. He was the type, she'd noticed, that would scream and puff himself up to make himself seem intimidating, but rarely acted upon anything he said.

However, this new emotional Drakken easily put her off balance. There was something about all the misery that really freaked her out… She enjoyed pain, of course—what villain didn't? … But something about the situation made it an exception, and Shego was finding herself wishing that the entire thing the night before had never happened at all.

It was really beginning to get to her… and it had barely been going on for six hours.

She hopped from her chair and stalked to the other end of the room, stopping before the phone that was bolted to the wall. The woman cast it a long, conflicted look.

She could apologize.

She turned her back quickly, deciding against the idea. If she said she was sorry, it would be like admitting that she had done something wrong, which she most certainly hadn't. All she had done was make an honest observation… it wasn't like she'd tried to upset him on purpose. And she wasn't about to have Drakken come rushing down to the room to have him crying all over her again or to have him give her an earful about that stupid mug of his…

The hard look on her face softened, and she gingerly glanced over her shoulder at the phone.

Of course, she had said a lot of mean things the night before… she'd seen that she was somehow making an impact on him, and she hadn't stopped. She'd liked that look on his face… she'd felt like she was the one who was calling the shots… like she was the person in control, for once.

Her head snapped back forward and she looked away at the opposite wall.

What was she thinking? It was stupid to feel sorry for what had happened. It was Drakken's fault that he lost all the time… he was the one who had given her fodder for her tirade. And it was his sensitivity that had him in a slump—he shouldn't have let what she said bother him so much… he shouldn't have even let her go as far as she did… He should have stopped her!

She grabbed the hair on the sides of her head in balled fists and let out a scream of frustration.

It wasn't her fault!

She stomped away from the phone and threw herself into a nearby armchair.

"This is ridiculous!" she shouted, her face pressed into the cushiony piece of furniture so that the sentence came out in a muffled drone. "Why am I even thinking about it? I didn't do or say anything out of the ordinary!"

She rolled over in the chair, resting her neck on one side of the chair so that her hair hung over one arm and her legs over the other.

"He's a total glutton for getting walked all over… He must love it, or he wouldn't do it so much! He fails again and again, and I'm always here, ready to provide that much needed dose of reality… He lives in the evil equivalent of fantasy land! I have to be the one that sets him straight… and I've done it a thousand times at least, and he never seemed bothered by it before! But I say that same thing one more time, and suddenly, it actually manages to penetrate his thick skull! And now _I'm_ the one in trouble! What a surprise! _Put the blame on Shego and her huge mouth! Doesn't she know when to stop?_ Hey, it's not my fault that he let it get to him this time… I mean, it's only the truth—he has to face the facts sometime or another! And that sometime or another was better last night than later! Besides, how was I supposed to know that he was going to be such a huge baby about the whole thing! I'm an assistant, for Pete's sakes, not a mind reader! I can't see—much less begin to fathom—what's going on in that freaky head of his! Besides, when your forty-one, shouldn't you be able to take a little tough love! Tough love! That's all it was! I wasn't purposefully trying to make him go all helpless and weak on me! I mean, who on earth would want that! Does anybody know how annoying it is to live with this guy day to day when he's in a good mood! Imagine a bad day! I swear, I'm going to die if I have to watch him cry all over the place! Why do I have to be the one who takes all the idiocy in full! Can't he hire a psychiatrist! IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

She screamed the last bit out, her sharp nails digging into the fabric of the chair so that some of the stuffing fell out and onto the stone floor.

"It's not my fault," she repeated evenly, slowly releasing her grip on the cushion of the furniture. She was breathing loudly and in deep gulps. She couldn't remember a time she had ever said so much at once without pausing in between.

Once recovered, she jumped up from the chair and snatched up a copy of _Villains Magazine_ from the coffee table. She pulled it open and buried her nose in the pages. Her green eyes narrowed, she began to read the first words she saw aloud.

"_Torture of the Month Club_ says…"

She paused and her jaw dropped.

"_Punishment by guilt-trip! _ Are you kidding me!" She threw the magazine across the room, then sank back into the chair behind her. Was the whole world against her?

"I didn't mean to hurt his feelings!" she wailed in exasperation. "I didn't mean to single-handedly retire him from villainy! I… I was just…"

She stopped, covering her face with her hands.

"I can't believe I actually feel bad about this."

She dropped her hands and looked down at the coffee table. Covered with _Villains Magazine_s from left to right, it was a mess of nasty scowling faces. And each one of them seemed to be glaring at her, as though they were showing their obvious disdain for her heartlessness… a stretch, considering that each and every one of those faces were famous for their own heartlessness, but that's what Shego saw.

She wondered if that was what the rest of her life was going to be like… Seeing things in her guilt… Soon, she'd every bit as crazy as Drakken, and then what would they—

All at once, a small patch of violet amidst all the bronze, red, green, and blue caught her eye. She quickly leaned over the table and pushed away some of the magazines that were concealing the thing. Once uncovered, her eyes widened at the discovery.

"_Wicked Lady_." She reached forward and picked the object up, a tight-lipped smile forming on her face. A yellow, star-shaped sticker on the cover read _'Free with your renewed subscription to Villains Magazine'_. Shego noticed that it was oddly dog-eared for being at the bottom of the pile.

"So, Doc… interested in the bad girls, huh?"

She flipped it open and began to scan through the magazine amusedly, noticing how a few of the pages had been obviously marked with folded corners. She stopped at a particularly interesting looking article that had been double bent.

"_Playing Nice—Five Ways to Cheer Up Your Favorite Bad Boy_."

Shego snorted, wondering why on earth Drakken had bothered to mark an article about making your boyfriend feel better, and was just about to toss _Wicked Lady_ back into the pile when it hit her. Slowly, a broad smile appeared on her face, and she suddenly found herself much more appreciative of the purple-colored magazine.


End file.
